Hooked on Teaching

"Try me,'' the girl said. "Give me a logic problem.'' He did. Soon
she asked for another. Then Stephen gave her a whole worksheet. She
asked for a grade and another worksheet. "After a while, I'd given her
four or five worksheets,'' Stephen recounts. "Then some friends asked
for a sheet of problems, too.'' Stephen had discovered teaching.

His first classroom was the Ashland Avenue Bus #9. He and three
friends would wait to go home together and then walk to a bus stop up
from the school to make sure they could get seats together. During the
45-minute ride to their homes on the South Side, Stephen taught logic.
"Pretty soon I started grading them, telling them they hadn't done
their homework, giving them tests,'' he recalls. "At the end of the
quarter, I gave them a grade. And at the end of the year, I gave
everyone a final exam.''

Normally, students with a talent for teaching receive little
attention and even less encouragement. There are few tangible
incentives or rewards to entice them into the profession. So Stephen
had no way of knowing that his newfound passion was about to bring him
widespread recognition and a scholarship at a topnotch university. BUT
MEANWHILE, word of his back-of-thebus seminar spread. When school
opened the following September, several students persuaded him to
repeat his logic class. Soon, he had four students grappling with logic
problems. The bus was not an ideal classroom, however, so at the urging
of his students, Stephen persuaded school officials to let him use an
unoccupied room at the high school before classes started. "I had to
leave home at 6 A.M. to get there for a 7:15 A.M. class,'' he says.
"After that, I started taking attendance.''

Last year, as a 16-year-old senior--he skipped the 6th and 8th
grades--Stephen taught his logic class on Tuesday, Wednesday, and
Friday. "I didn't want to get up that early on Mondays, and I figured
Thursdays they'd have to study for the tests,'' he says.

Nineteen students signed up for his course and three audited it. He
drew up lesson plans, assigned textbooks, and required his students to
write analytical reports. The class held a mock trial, so he taught the
students to construct arguments for the defense and prosecution. He set
up a Logic Bowl, pitting the Brain Busters against the Cranium
Crackers. He tested his students with mind benders from a fallacy book,
and they, in turn, held a stump-the-teacher day, with mind benders
devised to baffle Stephen. No one did. But some came close. One, for
example, asked for the rationale in ordering the following numbers: 8,
5, 4, 9, 1, 7, 6, 3, 2. (See answer on page 53.)

Sometimes Stephen also tried teaching other subjects. "He took over
my world literature class on several occasions, and often had better
control than I did,'' recalls Fred Hunter, an English literature
teacher at the school.

Stephen says his fellow students responded well to him because he
made his classes lively. "We did work,'' he says, "but we always had a
lot of fun.'' He is especially proud of his imitation of television
game show host Alex Trebek. His logic class did its own version of
Trebek's show, "Jeopardy!'' "I believe teachers' basic tasks are to
motivate and to discipline,'' Stephen says. "If you motivate a student
to learn, he won't be disruptive. If you get a disruptive student, you
have to humor him.'' Stephen recalls one student who came to his class
just to heckle him. "He'd say 'How do you know that's right? I can
teach better than you.' So I said, 'Here's the book.'" The student
declined the offer and stopped his heckling.

WHILE STEPHEN BOURNES AND HIS FRIENDS were tackling number theory on
the bus, Chicago financier Martin Koldyke was pondering teaching in a
vastly different setting: the well-appointed offices of the Frontenac
Company, his $250 million venture-capital firm.

Two years earlier, in 1985, Koldyke had created the Foundation for
Excellence in Teaching. Its goals were simple: to devise innovative
programs for the recruitment, retention, and renewal of excellent
teachers.

Koldyke was concerned that large numbers of good teachers were
leaving the profession. "We don't pay our teachers very much,'' Koldyke
told a reporter. "We treat them all the same, regardless of their
ability or performance. We give them no esteem or recognition. If you
were a venture capitalist like me and someone asked you, 'Would you
invest in an enterprise like that?' you'd say, 'No way.' Who in their
right mind would do such a thing?'' But, he added, when it comes to our
schools, the institutions that control our future, that is exactly what
our society is doing.

The foundation's first innovative program was the Academy of
Educators--a kind of "brain trust'' through which teachers can shape
education policies and programs, locally and nationally. Ten fellows
are named to the Academy of Educators each year. They are chosen from
the hundreds of Chicago-area teachers who are nominated by their
principals and others familiar with their work. They receive the Golden
Apple Award and a host of other professional benefits. But they also
are expected to give the foundation some guidance on future
projects.

"We had been given the charge to come up with ideas that would
improve not only the status of teaching, but the quality of those going
into teaching,'' says Dominic Belmonte, one of the 1987 fellows.
"Usually people go into teaching through a series of fortuitous
circumstances. Perhaps someone says, 'Gee, I think you'd be a good
teacher.' But you're not recruited into the profession the way
corporations or others go after new people. We wanted to develop a
unique program to attract young people to teaching.''

So the fellows began to discuss what classroom teachers could do,
and the idea for the Academy of Scholars was born.

As the fellows conceived it, the Academy would encourage talented
students to enter teaching, thus providing a source of high-quality
teachers to replenish their diminishing ranks in Chicago. They decided
that the Academy should recruit students interested in teaching,
nurture them in numerous ways through their college years, and then
reward them with a hefty cash bonus if they teach for five years in the
Chicago schools.

Getting the Academy up and running was not easy. In 1988, the
foundation contacted public, private, and parochial high schools
throughout Chicago urging teachers and counselors to nominate students
for the first class of scholars.

"We encountered a lot of cynicism,'' recalls William Dren Geer Jr.,
the foundation's executive director. "We received letters that said,
'Why would any of these wonderful kids want to be teachers?'' That
attitude rubs off on students, Geer says. "They're influenced by the
general climate in the schools, which is, 'Anybody who teaches is
crazy.'

But the foundation director and his staff persevered. They sent
applications to the 165 students nominated and held meetings for the
students and their parents. They also managed to persuade four area
colleges and universities--Northwestern University, De Paul University,
the National College of Education, and the University of Illinois at
Chicago--to provide financial-aid packages for the students
selected.

A total of 96 high school seniors completed applications. Last
November, the foundation selected from that pool 15 students to be its
first "scholars.'' Stephen Bournes was one of them.

The foundation assists the scholars with their college applications
and picks up all college expenses not covered by financial aid and
family contributions. It offers every scholar a paid internship each
summer and arranges seminars in teaching skills at the University of
Illinois. In addition, the fellows have arranged afternoon study
sessions to hone the students' reading, writing, and study skills.
Finally, each scholar is matched with one of the Golden Apple
recipients, who serves as a mentor.

"We're not just throwing money at them and saying, 'Here, go be a
teacher,'' says Belmonte. "We are 'velcroing' ourselves to them to
ensure that they'll be successful.''

One of the Academy's top priorities is to help replenish the supply
of minority teachers in the Chicago public schools. Of the first 15
scholars, 14 are black or Hispanic. "We're trying to find role models
and help infuse them back into the community,'' Belmonte says. For
every one of the scholars who teaches in a Chicago school, the
foundation will put $2,000 a year in escrow. At the end of five years,
the teacher will receive the $10,000, plus interest.

As for Stephen, he says that he probably would have become a teacher
even if he had not been selected as a scholar. He's quick to note,
however, that the honor has made a difference.

For one thing, it enabled him to enroll at Northwestern University.
The youngest of seven children, Stephen had expected to attend a less
expensive school. The appointment has also boosted his morale. "It has
made me more positive about my decision to go into teaching,'' he says,
adding that some people have discouraged him from entering the
profession.

Stephen entered college this fall. He expects to major in English
and French and plans to teach high school English. Already he is
looking forward to his return to teaching, and the gratification it
brings him. "I get a certain fulfillment when I come out of class,'' he
says. "It's like I've accomplished something.''

Stephen has turned over his logic class at Whitney Young to a new
teacher, one of his former students; at last count, 10 people were
enrolled.

(The answer to the brain teaser: The numbers are arranged
alphabetically.)

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